Can I sync my calendar with Booking.com? And why are there redundant channels (HomeAway v VRBO) available for syncing?

[Rasmus]

I’m curious to why calendar synchronization allows for redundent calendars.
For example VRBO and HomeAway is the same calendar so why install both of these? The same for Flipkey and TripAdvisor.

Also is there any update on when booking.com will work with the calendar synchronization.

[Jenny Oest]

@Rasmus - just a guess, but perhaps because when this was designed, they were not always the same?

[Tristan Brotherton]

@Rasmus Many of our customers only recognize the brand they have signed up with. As such it helps to have all the brands that a customer may recognize be available. There are also some other, smaller product benefits.

[Markus Nordvik]

Hi @Rasmus - I’ll chime as well to let you know that Booking.com (and any syncing) can be set up by choosing the “iCal” calendar type (screenshot below).

In general, all the channels you see represented are doing the same thing in MyVR:

• Import: an outside system (e.g. your Airbnb account) produces an iCal link that you can set in MyVR so that we can pull in the outside calendar’s events
• Export: MyVR produces an iCal link that you can set in an outside system (e.g. your Airbnb account) so that they can pull in the MyVR calendar’s events

What can get tricky is that not all outside systems treat iCal the same way - sometimes start and end dates can be off. The reason we have pre-defined connections (e.g. HomeAway, VRBO, Airbnb) is that we then know ahead of time if we need to adjust start/end dates, ensuring accuracy in the syncing. You can also change these settings yourself for any calendar sync.